NGO Consultant

NGO Consultant
Odisha NGO Consultancy Services

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Mumbai NGO turns to policing for a cause: Has reunited over 8,000 'missing' children with their families




The Supreme Court has finally cracked the whip on state governments for their abject neglect in handling cases of tracking missing children or reuniting runaway kids with their families.

And while the state machinery is expected to get its act into order only now, an organisation in Mumbai has been doing the police’s work instead for about eight years now.

Fourteen-year-old Rakesh Sahu, a native of Jhansi, fled his home in the hope of attaining the same stardom as Shah Rukh Khan.


Sahu had self-learnt some dance moves before he arrived in Mumbai but instead of making an entry in to the glamourous industry, he become just another street child, earning his livelihood by picking trash and selling it to scrap dealers.

While living on the streets of Mumbai, Rakesh, like most other street children, also took to whitenerinhalation addiction.

Lack of care and protection makes these children highly susceptible to addictions and sexual or physical abuse at the hands of elder children and others.

Fortunately for him, Rakesh would be reunited with his family soon enough, thanks to the efforts of Samatol Foundation who found the boy at a surburban railways station in Mumbai.

The organisation counselled and convinced him to join their five-week manparivartan camp.

On the last day of the foundation’s camp, the children are reunited with their families.



NGO volunteer Lata Wankhede, 30, run away from her home when she was eight

Ever since it opened in 2006, the organisation has reunited about 8,000 such children with their families .

“Every day, 150 to 200 children arrive in Mumbai for various reasons and many of them end up on streets.

"So far, our efforts are merely a drop in the ocean.

"We lose our sleep over the fact that 6,000 children turn up in Mumbai every month, and that is our only motivation,” lamented Samatol Foundation founder Vijay Jadhav.

The organisation has eight volunteers who monitor the various railway stations across the city in shifts and there is never a day when these volunteers return empty handed.

Lata Wankhede, 30, is one such volunteer.

She too had run away from her home when she was eight and ended up living on the streets of Mumbai.

“It takes about an hour to counsel minors and convince them to join the camp.

"The longer the child has stayed on the street, the more difficult it is to convince.

"So we keep an eye on children who have just alighted from trains,” said Lata who knows the lingo of the street kids as she, too, grew up as one of them.

This comes as a great advantage for her as it enables her to break the ice with runaway children who are often to rude to strangers who ask them too many questions.

Senior BJP leader Sanjay Kelkar had once visited an event organised by the foundation and was “so moved by their work” that he “decided to join them”.

Since then, he has been instrumental in allotting them space for shelters at Thane and Murbad. Samatol Foundation’s claims can put any state police force of the country to shame.

“Give us a child from any corner of India and we will trace his/her home in two days flat,” said Jadhav without a trace of arrogance.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2798509/mumbai-ngo-turns-policing-cause-reunited-8-000-missing-children-families.html